Slain Mexican official had Houston ties

Jose de Jesus Gallegos Alvarez lived quietly for the last seven years of his life in self-imposed exile near The Woodlands in a mansion complete with a moat.

Jose de Jesus Gallegos Alvarez lived quietly for the last seven...

Jose de Jesus Gallegos Alvarez, a self-made Mexican multimillionaire resort developer, had lived for the last seven years in self-imposed exile in the Houston suburbs, where he built a custom- designed mansion surrounded by a gleaming turquoise moat.

He died early in March in a hail of 9 mm bullets - assassinated only eight days after returning home to serve as the state of Jalisco's newly appointed tourism czar.

Two hit men chased down and killed the 47-year-old father of three as he rode in a government-issued SUV. Mexican authorities later claimed the unsolved March 9 assassination was likely related to his "private commercial" activities and not to his role as the secretary of tourism in Jalisco - home to Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city.

As its tourism minister, Gallegos could have become a key player in fortune-making and fortune-breaking decisions on the development of hotels, piers and other valuable land in the Pacific Coastal state, said George Grayson, a professor at the College of William and Mary and a leading U.S. expert on Mexico and its politics.

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Timeline for Gallegos

March 2006: Leaves job as developer executive at Mayan Resorts

December 2006: Establishes U.S. branch of his company, Jegal Corp., in Tomball

October 2008: Forms company with wife and children that owns Magnolia site of a $1.2 million mansion

2006-2011: Establishes four other Texas business names with associates and relatives

2006-2012: Buys and sells property in cash deals in Harris and Montgomery counties

March 9, 2013: Shot dead by unidentified gunmen after leaving a meeting

March 10, 2013: Jaliscan official claims slaying linked to victim's private business activities

But Mexican economic development jobs tend to have a dark side, Grayson suggested. Tourism secretaries, he said, are "often involved in negotiations with fat cat developers. Many of those developers are shadowy figures because a lot of money has to be laundered there."

Mexican state officials continue to investigate the slaying - and to probe possible connections to the dead man's financial activities, which have been based since 2006 near The Woodlands, according to local records and statements released by Jaliscan authorities.

Quick climb to power

A dapper individual who wore his dark hair combed back, Gallegos enjoyed a meteoric rise to powerful deal maker after starting his career as a Guadalajara Jesuit university graduate and state government engineer and bureaucrat.

His corporate website displays flashy images of his many hotel and condo developments, accompanied by a throbbing sound track of Latin rhythms. On the site, he claims credit as the visionary developer of an empire of Mayan-inspired palatial condo and hotel complexes that grace nearly every major Mexican resort from the Gulf of California to Cancun.

A spokesman for the Jalisco state prosecutor said Tuesday that there were no developments in the case. A spokesman for the Mexican attorney general, known as the PGR, did not respond to the Chronicle's request for information on a related audit of Gallegos' financial records that was launched in early April, according to El Mural newspaper in Guadalajara.

Alex Featherstone, speaking for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, refused to say whether American authorities are cooperating: "Generally speaking, we do not comment on matters under investigation."

In March 2006, Gallegos ended his relationship as an executive with Mayan Resorts, a major Mexican hotel and timeshare chain, and left his native Mexico. Mayan Resorts had no further dealings with him after 2006, according to a statement the company released in the wake of his assassination.

However, Gallegos maintained interests in other luxury resorts and condominiums in Mexico via his own company, Jegal Project and Construction Management.

Those projects included a high-rise in the ritzy Guadalajara suburb of Zapopan that rented space to a Ferrari dealer, and Puerto Vallarta's Deck 12, a waterfront complex that houses that city's controversial lone casino, according to the corporate website, Mexican press reports and an interview with a former business associate.

His property deals in Texas were much smaller in scale, public records indicate.

In December 2006, Gallegos began to establish a series of Texas corporations and partnerships - one named Jegal Corporation - and bought property in cash deals in Magnolia and in Tomball, state and county records show.

Eventually, Gallegos resettled his wife and children on a pine-studded dead end street in Magnolia, just outside The Woodlands, that is protected by video surveillance. There he constructed the family's $1.2 million mansion, accessible by a bridge across an artificial lake on a wooded 10-acre estate.

A relative at the mansion recently shrugged when asked whether U.S. officials could help solve the murder. The woman, who declined to identify herself, said only: "We prefer to leave things as they are."

Early expatriate

Felipe Rodriguez, another Mexican expatriate businessman and engineer now based in Tomball, worked with Gallegos for years on hotel developments in Mexico and on more recent land deals near Houston. Rodriguez said his friend enjoyed an excellent professional reputation as a developer.

He said Mexican media reports that Gallegos' slaying might have been tied to money laundering is likely an attempt by Mexican authorities to deflect public attention from the unsolved high-profile homicide of a public official.

"They are discrediting him as much as they can," Rodriguez said. "But he was a good person. It weighs on me how he departed (this life), and it weighs on me even more knowing the manner in which he went. It's not correct that someone took his life like that."

In 2006, Gallegos was one of the earliest settlers in what would become a wave of Mexican millionaire expatriates to choose The Woodlands area as a temporary or permanent U.S. escape from violence, extortion and other problems in their homeland.

Like others, Gallegos' family supposedly received threats, according to Mexican press reports, though Rodriguez said Gallegos still traveled often to Mexico and appeared unafraid to do so.

Like other more recent expatriates, Gallegos had enough money to qualify for a million-dollar investors' visa, though immigration officials refused to comment on his immigration status.

Gallegos established a series of Texas corporations that hid his local property deals behind a chain of innocuous initials and generic corporate names, state and county records reviewed by the Chronicle show.

He bought and sold acreage in Magnolia, where he built his family compound, according to Montgomery County records. And in deals involving Rodriguez, Gallegos bought and sold two large tracts of wooded acreage along FM 2340 in Tomball that were part of a larger historic ranch.

Sense of security

On another piece of that ranch land, Rodriguez developed a Fantasy Island-like party venue called La Tranquila Ranch with its own lagoon, a quartet of horses and a newly built reception center that mingles elements of a Colonial-era Spanish hacienda with all the latest gizmos and comforts of a classic Hill Country hunting retreat.

For several years, the party venue's address was listed as Gallegos' U.S. corporate headquarters, records show, though Rodriguez claims that Gallegos was not involved in the party business.

Gallegos had previously given a similar name - La Tranquila Resort and Spa - to one of his own projects - a luxury hotel, spa and golf complex in Punta de Mita, on the Pacific Coast north of Puerto Vallarta that offers lodging for $400 a night and up. Its website describes the getaway as "an exclusive luxury resort" that is "an oasis of peace and tranquility," and serves as a "magical hideaway."

Gallegos' departure from Mexico corresponded with a wave of political change in Mexico and in Jalisco - a prosperous state perhaps best known to Americans as the home of tequila.

He may have returned home in March because he believed his high- profile relationship with the newly elected Jalisco governor would protect him, said Howard Campbell, a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso and a specialist on Mexico and organized crime.